Programs:
Fitness and Sport

Research
by Marissa Salcedo

"Gym
Girls," c. 1906

Scandal,
1911

The
Portland YWCA's first building at Broadway and Taylor (1908) boasted
one of the few swimming pools in downtown Portland and a gymnasium
where women and girls could use and exercise their bodies in ways
that some considered unladylike or even dangerous. Basketball was
one of the sports women could play at the YWCA; the availability of
a physically demanding contact sport at the YWCA hints at the feistiness
that was a hallmark of the Health and Physical Education Department.
Another indication
of this attitude was the small scandal which broke out in 1911 when
Miss Millie Schloth, the swimming instructor, appeared in The Oregonian
newspaper in a somewhat revealing swimsuit for the day. The YWCA board
responded to the negative publicity by censuring Schloth, demanding
that "nothing of the kind ever happen again."[1]

Lifesaving
Class, 1950s

Reducing
in the 1950s

This
conflict suggests the ways in which the conservative Christian matrons
on the board experienced tensions with aspiring professional women
staffers, more liberated "new women," and adventuresome
youth who sought to loosen the confining restrictions of Victorian
dress, manners, and comportment. A notable success story was that
of Thelma Payne, an Olympic swimmer in the 1920s who learned her sport
the Portland YWCA pool. Access to the gymnasium and the pool, however,
was restricted to only some women; women of color were almost entirely
excluded from the facility before World War II, a painful marker of
life in Jim Crow Portland.

Aerobics,
1980s

Superswim,
1985

1.
Board of Director Minutes, March 1911, p. 266, Portland YWCA Archives,
Portland, Oregon. See also The Oregonian, 26 March 1911.
The idea of the "female body as an investment for marriage"
as expressed in YWCA programs is Marissa Salcedo's original insight.Back
to Text